Why do most blues musicians only play three chords?

[Lionelsax]

Wow, a huge list...
And which musical instrument do you feel most comfortable with?

It depends of the period, I've never felt so comfortable with violin and cornet.

[RLetson]

First thought (even after four pages) is "Which 'blues'"?

I think the first blues I paid attention to was the John Lee Hooker Newport set I mentioned back on page 1. (Though the blues were certainly the foundation for a lot of the radio pop I listened to in the 1950s.) But when I got to grad school, one of my best friends was from Yazoo City, and he introduced me to Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Slim, a raft of New Orleans players and singers (and Mose Allison), and I found my own way to the various folk-blues guitarists documented in the Oak how-to books, and to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Decades later, my first playing-out mentor laid out some fancy voicings so I could back him on "All Blues" (and I could still hear "the blues"). And when I started sitting in with the local bebop enthusiasts, I found myself trying to keep up with a whole lot of high-octane B-flat stuff obviously built up from three chords.

So--which blues is the blues?

[olliehalsall]

Years ago I saw John Mayal's blues band play at the Telluride jazz festival. When Mayal announced that Larry Coryell was going to sit in for a few tunes, Mayal's guitar player stepped up to the mike and said " this is going to be great folks, Larry knows the 4th chord".

Blues can have more than three chords. But a three chord blues played well is often all you need. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

I remember listening to an interview with Robert Wyatt from Soft Machine where he recalled Coryell jumping on stage with Hendrix and making a total tool of himself. Corryell was one of those jazz players who thought "if I combine my knowledge of scales and harmony and chops and combine it with all the gadgets and gizmos, I can do all that and beat someone like Hendrix...But he couldn't, and actually what Hendrix was doing was more fluid, more melodic, even more jazzy in fact".